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spent the rest of her existence crocheting a symbolic life of Christ in cotton thread.
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    Thereafter the big house on the Battle farm was governed by a series of evil-tempered housekeepers of that kind who advertise: “Widow, 45, wants position housekeeper on farm. Good cook. Obj. Mat.” One by one they came and were sweet and sad for a few days until they found out about Myrtle. After that they tramped through the house with flashing eyes, feeling that they had been abstractly raped.
    George Battle was old at fifty, bent with work, pleasure-less and dour. His eyes never left the ground he worked with so patiently. His hands were hard and black and covered with little crevices, like the pads of a bear. And his farm was beautiful. The trees in the orchard were trim and groomed, each one a counterpart of its fellows. The vegetables grew crisp and green in their line-straight rows. George cared for his house and kept a flower garden in front of it. The upper story of the house had never been lived in. This farm was a poem by the inarticulate man. Patiently he built his scene and waited for a Sylvia. No Sylvia ever came, but he kept the garden waiting for her just the same. In all the years when his son was growing up, George Battle paid very little attention to him. Only the fruit trees and the fresh green rows of vegetables were vital. When John, his son, went missionarying in a caravan, George didn’t even miss him. He went on with the work, yearly bending his body lower over his earth. His neighbors never talked to him because he did not listen to talk. His hands were permanently hooked, had become sockets into which the handles of tools fitted tightly. At sixty-five he died of old age and a cough.
    John Battle came home in his caravan to claim the farm. From his mother he had inherited both the epilepsy and the mad knowledge of God. John’s life was devoted to a struggle with devils. From camp meeting to camp meeting he had gone, hurling his hands about, invoking devils and then confounding them, exorcising and flaying incarnate evil. When he arrived at home the devils still claimed attention. The lines of vegetables went to seed, volunteered a few times, and succumbed to the weeds. The farm slipped back to nature, but the devils grew stronger and more importunate.
    As a protection John Battle covered his clothes and his hat with tiny cross-stitches in white thread, and, thus armored, made war on the dark legions. In the grey dusk he sneaked about the farm armed with a heavy stick. He charged into the underbrush, thrashed about with his stick and shouted maledictions until the devils were driven from cover. At night he crept through the thickets upon a congregation of the demons, then fearlessly rushed forward, striking viciously with his weapon. In the daytime he went into his house and slept, for the devils did not work in the light.
    One day in the deepening twilight John crept carefully upon a lilac bush in his own yard. He knew the bush sheltered a secret gathering of fiends. When he was so close that they could not escape, he jumped to his feet and lunged toward the lilac, flailing his stick and screaming. Aroused by the slashing blows, a snake rattled sleepily and raised its flat, hard head. John dropped his stick and shuddered, for the dry sharp warning of a snake is a terrifying sound. He fell upon his knees and prayed for a moment. Suddenly he shouted, “This is the damned serpent. Out, devil,” and sprang forward with clutching fingers. The snake struck him three times in the throat where there were no crosses to protect him. He struggled very little, and died in a few minutes.
    His neighbors only found him when the buzzards began to drop out of the sky, and the thing they found made them dread the Battle farm after that.
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    For ten years the farm lay fallow. The children said the house was haunted and made night excursions to it to frighten themselves. There was something fearsome